


Redemption

by Interrobam



Category: 101 Dalmatians (1961)
Genre: Animal Attack, Backstory, Child Abuse, Coming of Age, Community: disney_kink, Emotional Abuse, Gen, Harm to Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:36:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are tales told about the woods behind the De Ville estates. Cruella listens to them eagerly in the marketplace, during her mother's teatime gatherings. She is not afraid of them: not raven haired Cruella, not Cruella cruelly named with her nose in the air, not the eldest child of the oldest family. She is brave like the children of her stories: the boys who break bread with pirates, the girls who tame lions. Brave little orphans who listen to frightening stories and do not flinch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Emotional and physical child abuse, violence related to animals and children.
> 
> Written for the Disney Animated Kink Meme.

The De Ville family is old money, thick furs around shoulders and glowing pearls around necks. Cruella grows up in a mansion in Paris, summerhouses in Spain. She grows up with lace gloves and starched cotton collars, calling cards in golden plates and kisses to the backs of hands. It is the only world she knows: so tight and suffocating that, if she tries very hard, she can nearly mistake it for a hug. As it is, she has the woods behind her house: with rivers and enchanted clearings, with toadstools and woodland things, she can breathe fresh life into her lungs. She can move between the two Cruellas, one in the house and one in the garden, she can keep them in their own compartments.

There are stories told about the woods behind the De Ville estates. Cruella listens to them eagerly in the marketplace, during her mother's teatime gatherings. She is not afraid of them: not raven haired Cruella, not Cruella cruelly named with her nose in the air, not the eldest child of the oldest family. She is brave like the children of her stories: the boys who break bread with pirates, the girls who tame lions. In books with painted pictures the parents are always dead, in mansions with painted shutters Cruella is dead to her parents. They are all united, all some form of an orphan. Brave little orphans who listen to frightening stories and do not flinch.

They tell tales of a pack of dogs in the woods: feral things born and raised in the wilds, vicious things that gobble up cats and (it is said in the secretest, quietest whispers) human children. Many a poor family, many a hungry man gone into the woods with his son to hunt, are now childless and without even bones to bury. Cruella gets a thrill from these stories: as she does from looking into a candlelit mirror at Halloween, as she does from stepping on a crack or under a ladder, but she does not believe for a second that they're true. Wolves, maybe, roam the wood. Not dogs. Dogs are things with bows around their necks, things on leashes with pretty soft fur, things far removed from their origins. They eat kibble, not people. In the evenings when her lessons are done and her chores completed she makes her way past the edge of the trees, over the stream, under the fallen tree, to the clearing where she can swear she saw a fairy flit once upon a time. She becomes her alternate self. The other Cruella, Cruella of the garden, plays there: sometimes with her dolls, sometimes with flower chains, alone. She is not worried. She does not feel the eyes on her back. 

She keeps these journeys a secret, an impressive feat for a five year old, and her parents do not bother her about the lost hours. They do not bother her much about anything, and deep inside of her Cruella wishes they would.

Her sister, Pamela, is born in the winter and becomes the target of her immediate and profound scorn. A squirming red thing, a maggot of a person with curling blonde hair, she sucks up any praise Cruella might have supped on instead. Every teatime conversation is about her tiny toes, her wet eyes. Cruella wines relentlessly about being bored, about being ignored twice over. Her father buys her a white kitten. It does not heal the pain from Pamela's arrival, the narcissistic wound to her breast, but it is a soothing salve to watch the eager, fluffy thing give chase to mice and lap from a saucer. Cruella plays with it with a length of yarn, a crumpled up page from her ledger. She lets it out into the garden to bat at butterflies. It purrs in her lap, sleeps peacefully in her bed. Cruella, after all her years as an orphan, has something to love and something to love her.

One afternoon, like any other afternoon, she lets the kitten out. It does not come back for supper, does not greet her with a purr and a piercing meow. She runs all over their yard: peeks under every bush, climbs every tree. Crying, her stockings ripped and the lace of her skirt frayed, she asks Mr. De Ville to go out and look for it. He shakes his head, returns his affection and attention to his newspaper.

“A dog must have gotten her.” Cruella bites her lip, holds back her pain. Brave little orphans do not cry about kittens, about silly sentimental things like love.

“Yes papa.”

After that there are no more pets, her father tells her that the irresponsibility she showed forbids that. After that there comes a time when the novelty of a new baby begins to fade, and Cruella warms to Pamela. She did not mean to take Cruella's parents, did not mean to be such a bother. Cruella cannot hate her for things she hasn't control of. She can see now her mother losing interest, her father turning once more to his business, the baby being neglected. They are a pair now: two orphans in a painted house. One afternoon Pamela cries and cries, no one comes to tend to her. Cruella feels the sting of empathy, a need to help her blood. She finds a wicker basket, lines it with a blanket, and nestles the baby inside of it.

“I'll show you my clearing.” She whispers to the babe. “You have to be brave, like me.” Pamela giggles. Cruella sets off for the woods.

She breaches the line of trees with ease, making silly faces at her sister all the way. It is hard to cross the river with such a heavy burden, but she is careful, she manages. She comes up from under the fallen tree, her dress smeared with dirt, the light of wild Cruella in her eyes, and arrives at her fairyland. Placing the basket gently to the ground, she takes a breath, long and deep, of unstiffled life.

The pain comes after the shock. A long time after, once she's already on the ground, once her infant sister is crying under the upturned basket, once she can make out the teeth buried deep in her forearm. Cruella screams and kicks, the beast on top of her: a spotted, feral dog, shakes her muscles into ribbons. It isn't a wolf, most definitely not a wolf. It looks like her cousin's pet, but dirty, and the shock slows her movements. Despite her sluggish instincts she keeps fighting, keeps kicking: the dog bites her again. These are killing, eating bites. These are bites tired of chasing cats. A final blow lands true, knocks the dog back, and it shakes so that its ears flap against its head. Its tongue lolls, it snuffs. Pamela lets loose another wail, and Cruella sees in perfect clarity, in slow motion even, the perk that goes into the animal's ears.

She watches: paralyzed, bleeding, afraid, as the dog bows its head to the baby in the basket. As the blood and screaming fills the air. Cruella struggles to her feet and her life pumps hot out of her arm, cradled unconsciously to her stomach. Her knees feel tight, unresponsive like a doll's, as her sister cries and cries, as the dog feasts and feasts. She wants to be brave, she thought she could be brave. Her stockings feel warm and wet over her wooden joints: she's wet herself. Cruella yells for her papa, her mama, but she is too far into the woods, too far into her sanctuary, to be saved. What feels like an eternity later, once the crying has stopped and given way to crunching and gurgling, Cruella unsticks her bloody bones and tackles the animal nearly her size, beats it away with her fists and her mourning cries. Appetite sated, the dog glances briefly at the wailing thing at its side and slowly makes its way back into the shrubbery. Cruella gathers the pieces of her sister into the basket: she carries them carefully, all the way home, without giving the scraps that once formed Pamela a single glance, her body low with terror.

When they catch the dog they cut open its stomach. There is the meat of many animals, some bones and rocks, a tiny ragged ear. An ear from the head Pamela used to have. An ear the sum of everything she could have, should have saved. Her mother sobs all night and all day, her papa beats her with a sapling until she blisters. Beats her until the wild Cruella, Cruella of the garden, is dead. Cruella spends long nights awake: afraid of her nightmares, guilt ridden as a murderer in a cathedral. She knows now what she is: a coward and a worm, a useless guardian unfit for love, a rat far removed from redemption. She is not worthy of the pirate boys, the liontamer girls: she scribbles charcoal over their painted eyes, she puts their books away where they cannot pass judgment upon her.

At the end of the month a box comes to their doorstep: inside it is the dog with the spotted coat, fashioned into a rug. The body they can readily display, the open casket they never got, the only remaining memento of the second De Ville child. It was her father's idea: her mother calls it gruesome, demands it be put into the attic, away from her. The eldest and only daughter, the shame ridden survivor, waits until they retire to the parlor to argue before daring to approach it. She turns up her nose like she has studied her aunts doing, wipes her velvet shoes on the hide. 

Cruella's redemption will come in blood.

She is certain of it.


End file.
